A Keeper of Pages Bookshelf Reorganisation and Tour

Hey readers, I’ve got something a little different for you today – a few people have asked to see my bookshelves and as I live to please you all, I’ve created a whole post about my shelves. Be careful what you wish for. Like a lot of bookworms, I’m still dreaming of having a library, while having to make do with 2 bookcases. They are mostly always organised but the issue is, they are full and so I have those annoying book stacks that are slowly claiming my front room floor. I have books in boxes, books in cupboards, books in non-visible places in my house, but for the purpose of this post, we’ll focus on those on display. The majority of the books on my shelves are unread for the simple fact that if I cannot see them, I’m likely to forget I own them and thus, never read them.

Now, that’s enough rambling, this was the state of affairs before I worked my magic.

I told you, they weren’t that bad – admit it, you were expecting pure carnage!? But everything has a place, and the place for books is not the floor! Before I began Operation Bookshelf, there were two goals I had in mind – firstly, to tag all my review copies so they stand out, and secondly, to group all my nonfiction books together.

Operation Bookshelf

I tried to be practical and not take all the books off the shelf before starting, in case I decided to abort mission. So far, so good…

And then chaos descended….

Slowly but surely, order is being restored…

And the operation is complete!

No book was left behind, and my objectives were achieved! I went with wrapping post-it notes around the spines of review copies. You can see these post-it notes modelled here on my shelf dedicated to Orenda Books (and we’ll pretend Wolves in the Dark has a post-it on it too, to err is human). Side note: I love Orenda Books so it gets its own shelf.

Objective #2 was to group all my nonfiction books together. This is not as impressive as I thought, they couldn’t even make it across the whole shelf. I’ll console myself with the fact that I have more nonfiction books on my Kindle, and most importantly, a very valid reason to buy more nonfiction books!

A close up of some of my favourite bookish merch!

With the reorganisation of my shelves came the reorganisation of my book cart (found in the kitchen storage section of IKEA). It was orginally used to hold all the books I hoped to read in 2018 but it wasn’t effective, so now it holds the books that, sadly, didn’t make it onto the shelf, for no reason other than lack of room.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold….

The Reorganised Shelves

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If you look closely, you’ll notice a gap on the second from bottom shelf, that’s me being smart and saving space for next month’s Goldsboro book of the month book because that shelf will eventually become dedicated to my limited editions and signed copies, but that’s a reorganisation and tour for the future.

Everyone needs an Orenda section, lol. And yes the cart is so handy, and it has wheels so it’s easily moveable. It also comes in a range of colours, I highly recommend it! (I don’t work for IKEA, I swear 😂 I just love the cart)

Very nice! I need to get a couple of tall shelves like yours. The one (?!) I have now is short, wide, and deep with four shelves. It holds a lot of books, but I can’t see most of them. How am I supposed to enjoy my little library when I can’t see all the books? LOL

Haha, I’d be happy to come and organise yours, if you’re willing to cover the cost of the plane ticket 😂 But you will have loads of free space if I organise your shelves (because I’ll run off with half your books 😝)

I love your shelves! I try to save room on my shelves for the future as well. I just got new ones, so right now I have plenty of space…but we both know I have a book hoarding problem, so it won’t take long to fill them! 😂

Great post Janel. I love the idea of the post it note around review copies. I have a haphazard pile that works while there’s only a few, but now … I’m loving the little Ikea cart as well, might have to look and see if they’re still available. I can sneak it in without it looking like a book shelf 🙂

My cousin came with me to Ikea and she’s always telling me I have too many books, I bought the cart right under her nose and she didn’t have a clue! 😂 The post-it notes are so handy, I used to stack my review copies separately but it was so difficult to integrate then onto the shelf once read so I think this is a better system 😊

Right, subtle but a constant reminder! And definitely get yourself a cart, apparently you can get them super cheap in Target (I don’t entirely know what that is but I’ve seen on bookstagram, loads of people got their book carts from there) 😂

Love this Janel and so glad to see Goldsboro BOTM get their own shelf – the right thing to do for sure!! I am tempted by a trolley, despite knowing I don’t need one and it will fill with unread books, plus my husband may divorce me if I introduce a book trolley!